When I was walking by the bookstore last night, I found a magazine put out by Scientific American about Sustainablility, called Earth 3.0.  The whole magazine is about sustainable living.  It’s so funny how once you start studying something, resources keep popping out at you.  The cover article is “10 Myths about Sustainablity” by Michael D. Lemonick, a senior writer at Climate Central, a nonprofit climate change think tank.

From this article I learned more about the history of the use of the term sustainablility.  I didn’t know that there was a United Nations report, Our Common Future, that came out in 1987 which defined sustainable living as “‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’”

It got me thinking about how it is difficult for students to remember that they aren’t researching only to find out what they think they know.  Sometimes they discard an article because it is not directly answering their question.  I’m not exactly sure how to teach gathering material, even if you are not sure how it will link, and then making connections as you get a more global view of the topic.  But this simply written article may be a good start.

Today I am asking my students to summarize the myths, but then asking questions or making next-step statements about the information they read.  For example, I am going to check out Our Common Future next.

I hope this lesson will help them see that research is like going on an adventure with each resource having the possibility of leading somewhere else.